WELCH—The Music Department of Welch Schools presents the annual homecoming cookout, Fri., Oct. 1, 2010, from 5:00-6:30 p.m. in the lobby of the Welch Wildcat Gym.

Hamburger plates are $3.00 and hotdog plates are $2.50. Tickets are available from any secondary music student. Help support the programs of the Welch Schools Music Department!

WELCH—Robert Ellis Reed, 82, of Miami, Okla., passed away Sun., Sept. 26, 2010. He had suffered a severe stroke Aug. 29 and had been in the hospital at Joplin since that time.

Mr. Reed was born May 28, 1928, in Cleora, Okla., to Lot and Bertha Reed. He is survived by his wife, Mary Sue Reed; daughter, Susan Fisher and her husband Mike Fisher; son, Casey Reed and his wife Maggie Reed; grandsons, Joe Fisher, Adam Fisher, and Miles Reed; great-granddaughters, Katrina Fisher, Chloe Fisher, and Allie Fisher; and great-grandsons, Aiden Fisher and Sam Fisher. Mr. Reed was preceded in death by his parents, Lot and Bertha Reed; and, sisters Billie Cavin and Peggy Lou Reed.

Mr. Reed was raised in Cleora, Okla., and spent most of his life in northeastern Oklahoma. He spent 40 years in education, serving as a teacher, coach, school counselor, principal, and superintendent. He taught at Thoreau, N. M.; Bluejacket, Okla., Ketchum, Okla., Vinita, Okla., and Commerce, Okla. He served as principal at Commerce, Okla., and as superintendent at Ralston, Okla., Pryor, Okla., Commerce, Okla., and Northeast Area Vocational Technical School in Afton, Okla.

Mr. Reed served in the U.S. Navy as a Seabee in the Philippines in 1946 and aboard the USS Manatee (AO-58) during the Korean War. Mr. Reed was currently serving as a member of the Ottawa County Health Board, was past-president of the Ottawa County Teacher’s Association, and was active in the Gideon’s International organization.

Mr. Reed asked Jesus to be his Savior in 1946 and had taught Sunday School for most of his life. He was a member of First Baptist Church, Commerce, Okla.

Funeral Services will be held at 2 p.m., Wed., Sept. 29, 2010, at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home in Commerce, Okla. Visitation will be held at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home in Commerce, Okla., on Tues., Sept. 28, 2010, from 6-7 p.m. A private family burial will be held at a later date.

Services under the direction of Jim Thomas, Thomas Funeral Home, Welch, Okla.

Memorials may be given through the Gideons at: http://www.gideonsbible/memorial

Online condolences may be left here at WelchOK.com via the comments at the bottom of this obituary.

BARTLESVILLE, Okla.—Your Welch Wildcats defeated the Wesleyan Christian School Mustangs of Bartlesville Friday night, 46-22.

The Mustangs drew first blood, but the Wildcats answered back in short order, and the game was mostly Welch for most of the four quarters. It was a challenging field, 20 yards shorter than usual and soggy, but the Cats managed to own it regardless of the Mustang’s (and the refs’) best efforts.

This victory leaves the Cats 4-0 on the season. They face Agra at home Oct. 1 for homecoming.

And now here’s what you really want (camera settings seem to be a little better, but the fog was a real challenge):

WELCH—Your Welch Lady Cats handily dismissed the Afton Lady Eagles today, 13-0, to become district fast-pitch softball champs. In fact, the Lady Cats didn’t even give up a base until the third inning, and (if I recall correctly), no Lady Eagle ever touched third.

Hope you enjoy these pictures:

Photo courtesy Trudy "Hot Fingers" Hankins

WYANDOTTE, Okla.—Your Welch Lady Cats softball team beat Wyandotte in a 5-4 thriller Saturday to wrap up the Wyandotte Tournament in third place. On Wednesday, the ladies beat (run ruled) Colcord, 15-3, and lost to Inola, 2-0.

Coaches Durrance and Chenoweth remarked that Lexi pitched a great tournament, overall the girls look better, and that tehy’re looking forward to winning districts and going to regionals.

The Lady Cats’ record stands at 13-8 for the season. They next play at Seneca Monday.

Welch, Afton, and Copan will duke it out at the district tournament Sept. 23-24 in Welch.

Trudy Hankins contributed this report via her handy dandy iPhone. You, too, can be a WelchOK.com contributor. Send your news, info, and pics (even from your cell phone) to info ‹at› WelchOK ‹dot› com.

OAKS, Okla.—For the second time in as many weeks your Welch Wildcats left their gridiron competition in the dust as they handily added one to the win column Friday night in Oaks, the final scoreboard showing the Cats the 58-18 victors.

And now here’s what you really want, pictures. A quick note about the pictures: shooting football well is a balance between brightness and focus. Football fields are pretty dark, even with the lights on. The action is fast, so to capture it, you have to make the shutter speed fast, but the faster the shutter speed the darker the pics. In the end, you have to decide whether you want more blur or more darkness. I’m still working to find the perfect balance, which is hard because all fields are lit differently. Oaks’ field was very dark toward each end zone, and since the Cats spent quite a bit of time in the end zones, the pics are darker than I want, but they’re in better focus than last week. Just pretend the blurry ones are “artistic.”

From the Redneck Diva:

For as long as there have been people, there has been news. It probably started when Og thumped his saber-toothed tiger bone on the cave wall to alert the tribe his wife had just had their first boy-child. Then he graffiti’d up his cave walls to tell future generations. It progressed to squires dashing across the countryside to alert the neighboring village of a dragon attack. Then years later came the Pony Express where brave men on strong horses galloped through the prairies to deliver the news of stage coach robberies, train robberies, and bank robberies. Eventually came the invention of the telegraph. Then the telephone. Then television. (This is where the oldsters would add “and tell-a-woman!” then slap their knee.) And the finally the Internet.

Unlike our ancestors we don’t have to wait for ponies or pigeons or smoke signals. We just log on, sign in, and boom! we’re connected to a virtually endless source of information and news.

But is it too much?

I have written before about my addictions to Twitter and Facebook and how I have deep meaningful relationships with most of my electronics. But sometimes even I wonder if I’m too connected. Back in June I decided to cut myself off from Twitter. I made the decision after I realized I had gotten so used to my phone chirping that I didn’t even hear it anymore. My husband said he heard that ringtone in his sleep. But that may have been because it was going off while he slept. I turned off all mobile alerts and even updated less. It was strangely refreshing. I have since begun tweeting more, but the mobile alerts have stayed off. I check it from the Web and that’s it. It feels pretty good, even though sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on something. When I feel that way, though, I just tell myself that there really was a time in my life I wasn’t digitally connected to the 361 people I follow on Twitter—only 56 of whom I have actually met in real life. This isn’t bad, the gratuitous sharing of information with 305 strangers…I don’t think it’s bad anyway…is it? Let me ask my 361 friends and I’ll get back to you.

And then there’s Facebook. Facebook is a little more personal for me. I know virtually every one of my Facebook friends, except for a few who follow my blog page and friended me from there. And here’s where my quandary begins. Is Facebook too personal?

In the past few weeks I have read about the death of a teenager who was tragically electrocuted, a nine-year-old who fell off playground equipment and passed away, and a 15-year-old who was killed by a drunk driver. Now granted, I probably would have learned about these accidents on the local news if I weren’t a Facebook user, but because of Facebook I knew about these accidents mere hours after they happened, some in great detail, and all were splattered on update after update, page after page.

If it were my child, how would I handle such information being broadcast in such a sensationalized way? Would I embrace the outpouring of concern that immediately followed the news? Would I be angered at how flippantly people talked about the accident, not thinking that maybe I don’t want to see the news—my news—over and over and over, written and re-written by people I don’t know, and will likely never know?

The day after the playground accident I followed a trail of comments out of pure curiosity as to how a family member was handling the death that was being made so very public, so very personal, so very constant. I landed on the little girl’s older brother’s page where he was lamenting not being able to hug his sister ever again. He was thanking everyone for their concern, their offerings of help, their prayers, their words of comfort. And while I was happy to see that he was seemingly okay with the outpouring, I didn’t stay long. I felt like I had stumbled into a room where I knew no one and was a total stranger. It seemed like I was intruding.

And then it occurred to me: I was.

For as long as I’ve been alive I’ve heard the phrase time and again, “What’s this world coming to?”, which is usually uttered when you hear of people leaving their babies in hospital doorways and walking away. Or maybe when an elderly woman is mugged while putting her groceries in her car at the grocery store. Or perhaps when neighbors hears a woman being beaten inside her home by her boyfriend or husband, but no one will help her or call for help for fear of getting involved in a situation that is none of their business. All of those instances where one certainly has to wonder where is the human good? Where does it hide in times like that? Have we watered down all of our goodness until it’s merely apathy?

Or have we taken it to another extreme at the same time?

We are a society where we are in each others’ business all the time. Friendships are torn apart by gossip and slander on someone’s “wall.” Teenagers’ reputations are destroyed by cyber-bullying. Comments are misconstrued. Emotions are splattered across the Internet like so much paint in a ceiling fan. We know things about our friends that we shouldn’t know. We know where they are, what they eat, when they go to bed, when they are alone, and when they aren’t.

Is our concern so bipolar that it flips from non-caring to too much caring in cycles? Do we turn a blind eye to the homeless man asking for work or food or diapers then that same afternoon not even hesitate to gossip about our neighbor, intrude upon grieving, or comment on a subject about which we have no business commenting?

I don’t have an answer to these questions. I would like to think we could find a nice balance of concern and empathy and compassion, but I’m not sure we can. I think we are a society of extremes. It’s all or nothing, baby. Can we change? Can I change?

Maybe if we all took our laptops off our laps for awhile, drove to a friend’s house, and face-to-face asked them, “How are you—really?” we might be able to find an answer.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her online at http://www.theredneckdiva.com and http://therhok.com.

BLUEJACKET, Okla.—Your Welch Wildcats ended tonight’s football game just a bit early as they racked up a 48-0, game-ending touchdown with 2:25 remaining in the fourth quarter. It was all Welch tonight, from the opening kick-off, which Asa Chenoweth returned for a TD, to the very end. A great deal of Bluejacket’s forward motion came from Wildcat penalties, and the Chieftains spent very little time in Wildcat territory.

Though billed as the “battle for the bell,” Bluejacket again would not allow Welch to have possession of the rivalry-symbolizing bell. This fact has been interpreted as less-than-sportsmanlike behavior on Bluejacket’s part for years. For now, the Cats will have to be content with a romping victory and their celebratory photo with the non-mobile bell.

Here are some photos of the drubbing:

You can help provide news and info to our community. Email us at info :at: WelchOK :dot: com.

WELCH—The Golden Rocket 4-H has scheduled a meeting for 6:30 p.m., Thur., Sept. 9, 2010, at the Welch Civic Auditorium. Following meetings will be held the second Thursday of each month, September through May.

These meetings have been added to our Community Calendar. To have your community event added to our calendar, email us the details at info ‹at› WelchOK ‹dot› com.